Cheating-boyfriend ad campaign wins gong

The best advertising campaign in the country last year was so effective you have probably never heard of it.

The campaign, by agency DDB for the website nzgirl.co.nz, won advertising's top prize at the Axis Awards. It had a budget of just $5000.

The finely targeted promotion, which used email, outdoor advertising and a "guerrilla" stunt involving a sledgehammer and a car, was chosen above campaigns with far higher profiles and bigger budgets.

DDB copywriter Bridget Short, who created the campaign with Regan Grafton, said the award showed that new media were an increasingly powerful tool.

"It's not the end of traditional media, but we have to think smarter and in different ways to reach people," she said.

The campaign began with an email inviting young women to nominate an ex as the Worst Boyfriend in New Zealand.

The winner's name went on a humiliating banner flown above the Big Day Out music festival in Auckland this year.

A second banner read: "Don't mess with NZ girls, nzgirl.co.nz."

Outside the main gates, a woman posing as a betrayed girlfriend invited people to take a sledgehammer to her "cheating boyfriend's" car.

Footage of the car's demise circulated on another viral email, so-called because it spreads by people passing it on.

Ms Short said that with young people becoming increasingly media-savvy, a campaign that relied on them passing on an advertisement had to be cool and funny.